The Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase, now in its 21st year, is one of the highlights of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and has become one of the most popular events during Cannes week.

To find the featured directors, Saatchi invited submissions from directors across the globe and uses its Network of some 140 offices worldwide, as well as relationships with key on-line sources. From an initial line up of several hundred directors, The Saatchi Worldwide creative board chose the final selection and this year only 17 directors made the cut.

Kate Stanners (pictured), creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi London, and worldwide spokesperson for the NDS, says: “As the media landscape constantly evolves, the skills required of a great director are still based on an ability to tell a story, to engage their audience, be that through new techniques or skilled performance.”

These are the directors selected for the NDS reel 2011 with the title of the submitted work:

Tom Eslinger, creative director digital, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide says: “Social media and online video channels have sliced the time that it takes for new directors to be noticed. Instead of just consuming reels, we throw more and more nets out, but smaller, narrower and more finely woven ones. Several of the directors were spotted through social chatter, discussions on video and film blogs and the humble ‘old’ viral.”

This year’s theme, ‘Hello, Future’, was devised by Saatchi senior creative team Jonathan Santana and Xander Smith. Santana and Smith have taken over from Bob Isherwood, former worldwide creative director and creative director Richard Myers and bring the concept of the showcase to the next generation of creatives.

According to Santana and Smith: “We wanted to create an idea ambiguous enough to incorporate lots of different themes and talents. Essentially we’re commenting on the directorial talent of tomorrow, but also the future reality of the communications field.”

The brief was to visualise the concept of ’Hello, Future’ in the form of a standout music video inspired by one of three tracks selected from Moby’s new album, ‘Destroyed’. The winner of the competition, Alberto Gomez, will be offered the chance to work on a project in a key office in the Saatchi & Saatchi Global Network.

At the NDS an edit of the ten finalists is included, showing the work of Frank Beltrán, David Evan Bowers, Alberto Gomez, Brian McCann, Lindsay MacKay, Antonin Pevny, Oden, Martin Rodahl, Alexey Terehoff, and Roland Wittl. The winner, Alberto Gomez from Mexico, will get the chance to work on a Saatchi & Saatchi project.